Redwood City Rents Plummet Amid Coronavirus: Report

SILICON VALLEY, CA — A persistent pattern has emerged throughout most of the United States amid the coronavirus crisis: Rents in urban areas have fallen precipitously while in suburbia they’ve held steady.

A notable exception to this pattern has emerged in Suburban Silicon Valley, where rents have fallen at a comparable pace to that which big cities are experiencing, The Mercury News reports.

San Mateo is among two Peninsula cities that typify this anomaly according to the report. Redwood City is the other.

San Mateo has seen rents fall 9 percent since January, the report said.

Rents have plunged 13 percent in Redwood City in 2020.

Santa Clara rents have fallen 11 percent this year and in Milpitas 7 percent according to the report.

In Mountain View and Sunnyvale rents have dropped 14 percent.

The report cites the emergence of work-from-home amid the pandemic as a new normal for many, especially in the tech-heavy South Bay and Peninsula areas as a key factor in the migration of many to less expensive regions.

Tech giants such as Facebook, Google and Apple are among the companies that have extended work-from-home into early 2021, the report said.

Stanford University and other colleges and universities have limited campus activity, further reducing demand according to the report.

Igor Popov, chief economist at Apartment List, told The Mercury News the outlook for Silicon Valley rental costs is especially uncertain.

“Every company is trying to figure out what their long-term approach to work is going to be,” Popov said.

“The deeper you get into Silicon Valley, the more of a real issue it is.”

Read more at The Mercury News